Tribune Co. to slash 700 jobs

Tribune Co. is cutting 700 newspaper employees, or about 8 percent of its publishing workforce, as the Chicago-based media company restructures to centralize certain functions for the papers.

Tribune, which owns eight major dailies including the Chicago Tribune, will streamline advertising, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, human resources and digital strategy for its newspapers instead of having all of those functions for various publications spread across the country. It's making the move as it prepares to spin off the publishing division and focus on expanding its broadcast operations.

"Creating these critical efficiencies and ensuring the long-term strength of our mastheads will, unfortunately, result in the selective reduction of our publishing staff," Tribune CEO Peter Liguori said in a memo today.

Tribune had 8,487 full-time employees in its publishing division and 2,598 employees in its broadcast division, as of June 30, the company has said in financial documents.

Mr. Liguori had suggested in recent months that he would be cutting expenses, including possibly jobs, after announcing in July that it would separate its two business lines. Tribune through September had already cut 360 jobs this year.

The company earlier this year had considered selling the publishing business and could still decide to sell the division or the individual newspapers, though consolidating the various functions could make it more unwieldy to sell the papers separately. Tribune also owns the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant.

The company has been seeking to reduce costs to buoy profits in the face of a continuing decline in newspaper readership and advertising revenue. It emerged this year from four years of bankruptcy during which it tried to restructure its business and decided it would consider selling its larger publishing division.

Tribune's operating profit for the first nine months of the year rose one percent to $242 million, the company reported recently. Operating revenue declined 6.3 percent to $2.13 billion, including a four percent drop at its publishing division, which reported revenue of $1.38 billion for the period, and an 11 percent slide in broadcast revenue to $748 million.

While Mr. Liguori's memo suggested the bulk of the job cuts were on the business side of the newspapers, including advertising and support functions, about a dozen editorial positions were also eliminated, including a top website editor. A company spokesman didn't immediately respond to questions regarding what types of jobs were terminated and where they were cut.

The company's biggest paper is the Los Angeles Times; the Chicago Tribune is its second-largest.

"Our long-time, local publishers and editors will continue leading their publishing businesses and newsrooms," Mr. Liguori said. "This new structure will afford our publishers, editors and their staffs greater opportunity to focus on what they do best — servicing their local readers, advertisers and communities."

The company announced a number of senior appointments that begin consolidating the publishing division's business functions, effective Jan. 1. Bill Adee, senior vice president of digital development and operations for the Chicago Tribune, was named to lead the publishing division's "digital future;" Bob Fleck, who is senior vice president of advertising for the Chicago Tribune, will take on the new role of executive vice president of advertising for the division; Bill Nagel, who is executive vice president of business services for the Los Angeles Times, was appointed to the new role of executive vice president of marketing for the division; and Bob Thomas, vice president of distribution at the Chicago Tribune, will become senior vice president of distribution for the entire company.

Tribune has turned its attention to expanding its broadcast division, which includes WGN-TV, the cable channel WGN America and some 40 more local TV outlets across the country, including those that the company plans to purchase as part of its acquisition of Local TV Holdings LLC announced earlier this year.

In remarks last week to analysts gathered for a public markets conference in New York, Mr. Liguori's underscored the company's plan for building profits at the broadcast division, noting that WGN America has significant “untapped potential” and detailing the Tribune's strategy for developing new broadcast content.